Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The 57th Annual BAAL conference, Essex, Kanada, 5 - 07 Eylül 2024, ss.170-171, (Özet Bildiri)
Pre-service teacher education programs in the 21st century still tend to be characterized by face-to-face school-based mentoring schemes where the apprenticeship of observation model is the norm. Pre-service teachers are usually provided with insufficient feedback on their teaching activities and their professional development. Peer mentoring is still not considered a very common feature of the practicum in English as a Lingua Franca (EFL) contexts. Hence, this 10-week exploratory qualitative case study addresses the impact of an international online peer consultation integration into the practicum on the professional development of 8 Turkish EFL pre-service teachers. The theoretical frameworks utilized in the study were community of practice, activity theory and socio-constructivism. The data were collected via the classroom dilemmas posted on the international online educational platform Myschoolsnetwork (https://www.myschoolsnetwork.com/dilemmas), pre-service teachers’ reflection reports and online semi-structured interviews during the spring semester of 2020 and 2021 academic year. The online peer consultation in the study was implemented via the dilemma tool of Myschoolsnetwork in four phases adding a dilemma, asking and answering questions, analysis and advice and evaluation. Content analysis was utilized for the data analysis. The dilemmas were grouped into four categories: classroom management, intercultural communication, assessment tand testing and special needs. Findings revealed that the adoption of a multi-layered evidence-based, dialogic and critical approach to preservice teacher education in an online community of practice via online peer consultation fostered multivocality of pre-service teachers. The peer consultation acted as as a catalyst for the pre-service teachers’ professional development. Their online project engagement in an online community of practice also appeared to promote their individual and collective teacher agency as well as their professional identity development. The integration of an international online peer intervention into practicum is also likely to promote internalization at home in tertiary education.